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EDITORS’ NOTES

Recorded before a live audience at Nashville’s Oceanway Studios, All Sons & Daughters’ Live achieves an intimacy all too rare among worship music albums. Members Leslie Jordan and David Leonard avoid theatrical excess to create a mood closer to that of a storefront church than a concert hall. The duo’s bittersweet, earnest vocals blend effortlessly as they offer tunes rooted in American folk and country traditions. Opening with the penitent’s prayer “Brokenness Aside”, Live slowly builds as it praises the Lord’s majesty (“Hear the Sound”) and offers expressions of spiritual need (“Reason to Sing”). Musically, AS&D veer from galvanizing Mumford & Sons–like numbers (“Oh How I Need You”) to yearning pop hymns (“My God My King”) and sweet acoustic balladry (“Called Me Higher”) while the crowd joins in as the Spirit moves them. “All the Poor and Powerless” is a particularly moving expression of reverence, accented with gospel piano and keening steel guitar. Taken together, the spiritual humility and plainspoken musical grace heard on Live make it a worship project of unusual honesty and power.

EDITORS’ NOTES

Recorded before a live audience at Nashville’s Oceanway Studios, All Sons & Daughters’ Live achieves an intimacy all too rare among worship music albums. Members Leslie Jordan and David Leonard avoid theatrical excess to create a mood closer to that of a storefront church than a concert hall. The duo’s bittersweet, earnest vocals blend effortlessly as they offer tunes rooted in American folk and country traditions. Opening with the penitent’s prayer “Brokenness Aside”, Live slowly builds as it praises the Lord’s majesty (“Hear the Sound”) and offers expressions of spiritual need (“Reason to Sing”). Musically, AS&D veer from galvanizing Mumford & Sons–like numbers (“Oh How I Need You”) to yearning pop hymns (“My God My King”) and sweet acoustic balladry (“Called Me Higher”) while the crowd joins in as the Spirit moves them. “All the Poor and Powerless” is a particularly moving expression of reverence, accented with gospel piano and keening steel guitar. Taken together, the spiritual humility and plainspoken musical grace heard on Live make it a worship project of unusual honesty and power.

TITLE

TIME

Brokenness Aside (Live)

5:56

Hear the Sound (Live)

4:14

Oh How I Need You (Live)

4:05

Great Are You Lord (Live)

4:50

Rising Sun (Live)

5:40

Reason To Sing (Live)

4:02

My God My King (Live)

2:30

Oh Our Lord (Live)

3:52

Wake Up (Live)

6:39

Called Me Higher (Live)

5:56

God With Us (Live)

4:06

All the Poor and Powerless (Live)

6:18

Your Glory / Nothing But the Blood (Live)

8:57

13 Songs, 1 Hour 7 Minutes

Released: 23 Apr 2013

℗ 2013 Integrity Music

About All Sons & Daughters

Formed in 2009 by Leslie Anne Jordan (guitar, vocals) and David Alan Leonard (piano, vocals) under the moniker Sons & Daughters (later changed to All Sons & Daughters to avoid confusion with the Scottish rock band of the same name), the CCM duo crafts rootsy country-folk in the vein of the Last Bison and the Civil Wars. Worship leaders at the nondenominational Journey Church in Franklin, Tennessee, the pair issued a trio of EPs (Brokenness Aside: EP No. 1, Prone to Wander: A Collection of Hymns EP, and Reason to Sing: EP No. 2) before releasing their full-length debut, Season One, in 2012. The Longing: EP No. 3 followed later the same year, with the full-length Live arriving in 2013. An eponymous album appeared in 2014 and became their first to hit the Top Ten of the Christian and Folk Albums charts, as well as landing in the top half of the Billboard 200. Another live LP, Great Are You Lord, followed a year later. In 2016, the duo released Poets & Saints, which was inspired by travels in Europe. A companion book titled Poets & Saints: Eternal Insight, Extravagant Love, Ordinary People was penned by their pastor, Jamie George, and published by the nonprofit David C. Cook. ~ James Christopher Monger & Marcy Donelson